


A Candle Yet at Night

by nonisland



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Birthday, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fic, Wartime, the ao3 suggested "birthday fluff" but regrettably that does not apply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: At the start of Guardian Moon, 1181, the heirs of Fraldarius and Gautier find their way to Galatea.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	A Candle Yet at Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DragonNinjaAri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonNinjaAri/gifts).



> Ashley asked for "felix/ingrid/sylvain, Something Stupid" for that Twitter meme where your friends give you a character or ship and optionally a prompt and you write them one sentence of a fic you might write. Did I manage to make it unambiguously shippy? No I did not. But did I manage to keep it to only one sentence? NO, I DID NOT.
> 
> Thanks to Scott as always for making sure I did not screw anything up too badly.
> 
> * * *

The Guardian Moon of 1181 blows in bitter and furious. Crystals of snow hit Ingrid’s skin like an unrelenting Sagittae, too cold even to burn, as she makes her way up the path to the inn. Stupid to be here, when there’s so much to be done back at home, but…

Sylvain waves her over from a table by the fire, taking full advantage of his reach. Felix, across from him, pushes a mug over to Ingrid as she sits down. She lifts it to her nose, smells wine and spices, and takes a mouthful. It glows down her throat as she swallows.

“There’s stew or stew,” Felix says.

“Oh, I shouldn’t—” There’s food back up the hill, after all. She hadn’t come here to waste money, she’d come here because Masha had said her brother had said there were a pair of lords at the inn, handsome as anything out of a story.

“So, stew,” Sylvain says, and makes a little beckoning gesture to Chloë behind the bar. Ingrid kicks him in the ankle and he yelps. “Can’t a man even buy a friend dinner without getting beaten for it?”

“Hands _off_ the maids,” Ingrid says. Chloë’s sister works up at the castle too. One way or another, she knows almost all the girls in the town.

Sylvain spreads his hands palm-up, “I was just being— Oh, hello, sweetheart, can we get one more bowl of the stew and…” He squints at Ingrid, a light look that still pierces like snow. “Three of the house rolls, please.”

Chloë looks at Ingrid. Ingrid yields. “Thank you,” she says.

Felix hands her the roll sitting next to his own empty bowl. Ingrid takes it, because it’s Felix and he’s never been that fond of bread anyway. Between bites, she says, “What are you doing in Galatea?”

“Checking the borders, ostensibly,” Sylvain says, knocking back the rest of his mulled wine. “Making sure Galatea doesn’t need anything.”

She’s glad he said it, and not Felix, but for just a moment the fourth seat at their table still holds Glenn’s ghost instead of Dimitri’s. She has to swallow twice before she can say, “Ostensibly?”

“There’s a rumor that a man with the strength of a giant is living in the mountains outside Fhirdiad,” Felix says. “Eating bandits and uprooting trees for sport.” His voice takes on a mocking twist. “Who else but the boar prince could that be?”

Ingrid feels a soaring moment of hope, and then the freefall of logic. “I can’t go,” she says. “My father—the people here—”

Felix nods. “We thought we should tell you anyway.”

“And it’s almost your birthday,” Sylvain says as Chloë comes back with Ingrid’s stew, balancing a basket of rolls in her elbow and carrying a pitcher in her other hand. “We didn’t miss it, did we?” To Chloë he adds, “Thank you, gorgeous. Could we get some more of that wine, too?”

It _is_ almost Ingrid’s birthday. She stares unseeing at the steaming bowl in front of her. This time a year ago she’d been having tea with the professor, in a warm room, knowing that roast venison and baked vegetables and fluffy bread that rose quickly enough to be sweet would follow. Now—well, the inn is warmer than the castle, at least, and the food’s probably better. “You didn’t miss it,” she says finally. “It’s tomorrow.”

It’s such a stupid thing to care about, in the absolute dead of winter, with a war going on, with Dimitri probably dead—rumors aside—and certainly lost. But they’d…remembered. Found a way to make it out to Galatea at the start of the moon. She’d thought it was another thing she couldn’t care about any more.

Sylvain smiles warmly at her, and Felix nudges her foot gently under the table with his. From him that’s almost as good as a hug.

Ingrid blinks tears out of her eyes and gets to work on her stew. “Will you have any borders to check next month?”

“Nah,” Sylvain says, smile broadening into a grin. It’s tired, and sharp, but there’s a familiar echo of trouble in it anyway. “Next month you’re going to Fraldarius for a lesson on tactics or something like that. Like I’d deprive Felix of having some kind of entire roasted animal for his birthday.”

Felix and Ingrid both protest at that, and Sylvain leans back in his chair and laughs. It’s warm in here, gold with firelight, and the stew and the wine are warming Ingrid from the inside out. She’s glad they came.


End file.
